Former Valve VR Engineer Moves Over To Oculus Rift

Atman Binstock, a now former lead engineer for Valve's VR project, has moved over to Oculus Rift and is now its new chief architect.

Binstock helped to develop Valve's VR Room demo, which was recently shown, and generated a lot of excitement, at Steam Dev Days. Binstock also has history with Intel and DICE. According to the post on Oculus Rift's website announcing Binstock, he helped the Valve VR team overcome simulator sickness and deliver a true sense of "presence" in a virtual reality setting.

Our TakeOculus Rift is attracting some impressive talent. Whatever it has going on behind the scenes to show off to potential employees, it must be making people very exciting. I'm excited to see what Oclulus has in the works.

It is a good sign to see leading industry talent gravitating to such a revolutionary approach to gaming (and other applications). Grounds it somewhere outside of 'novelty'...like motion control and 3D was...and really makes you believe it is the next evolution in gaming. Sure it's not the Holodeck...but it is one step closer ;)

Valve have stated a few times lately that they want to work with OculusVR rather than compete with them. They also said their own VR headset wasn't intended for public launch, but rather to explore and problem-solve the technology in order to share what they learn. There is no conflict of interest here.

The Oculus continues to pick up Steam (double entendre har har) and my excitement is already off the charts. I continue to eagerly await the true debut of the device and how it will change gaming forever.

This is a good sign for Oculus Rift, even if the actual future of it may not match the hype. It seems like it's going to be very expensive and a little impractical, yet impressive beyond any computer screen.